Today's gig was one where Slavantas really put our noses to the grindstone for, we worked our butts off (and In particullar me and our new guitarist "Jack T. Ripper" Jacques) practiced our fingers to the bone just so we were ready to do this and pull it off.
But as we all know, if one of the team doesn't have his being into it 200% the others will suffer under his lack of focus. And that member of the team was our basspalyer Ade. He showed up with his hair dyed black which because of his naturally red couple actually turned into this very dark blue/gray hue, we laughed about how silly it made him look. And we could see from his demoenor that he pulled an all nighter we also noticed the lack of him bringing along his amp, when I asked him about it he clarified that Remco, our sound guy, said that he could use the amp from the band who would play before us at the venue we played.
And so began a night of little troubles and Frustrations, the bar we played didn't have a good sound system, so Jacques and I knew that we would rely on us knowing our parts by heart than to actually being able to hear each other, so we spend time prior to going on stage by tuning up our guitars and warming up by going through the parts. Ray, my best friend and our stage manager goes "Guys, you're on in ten." giving us the signal to put our gear on stage and start hooking everything up. I put up my Marshall cab, connect my London City Bulldog amp and hook up my Boss GT5 multiffects unit and for good measure check the tuning on my Explorer and my white strat one last time before making sure the levels were right, the usual thing a gigging guitarist does while getting ready to play. I look up to my Right and see Jacques doing the same thing, within a couple of minutes we were both ready to go for it. But then I heard some commotion at the other end of the stage. When I looked over I saw Ray and Ade shouting at each other and that Ade's end of the stage was suspiciously empty. I managed to capture the words "Why the f*** isn't my bass onstage yet?"
Ade unpacks his stuff and sets up and does his level check before calling me over and going "Yo, dude, I'm not familar with this amp, can you please make sure I sound right?" so I put my guitar down and fidget with the knobs on the amp until Ade gives me the thumbs up. The gig starts and as we predicted, the sound system of the venue was too small and insufficiant for any of us to properly hear the what the others were doing, so true as to what we rehearsed, Jacques and I used our Drummer as a base to guide us through the songs while playing as tightly as we could go hoping that we would lock in to what the other was playing, since Slavantas does a lot of Wishbone ash style harmony guitar it is essential that we play as one and it's a tough feat to pull off if you can't hear what the other is playing. And even more so when your bassplayer is like a raging bull on stage.
Ade's playing was beyond sloppy, he frequently was behind the beat and most of the time he was just mindlessly beating the strings of his bass. And during one instance I suddenly heard a destinct lack of low end and a lot of Irish cuss words and I see Ade in front of the stage gathering the pedals which he apparently kicked off stage in his drunker stupor. Our songs are complex with revolving time signatures and they need to be played really tightly and if the low end falls away, so does the "Oomph" in our overall sound, because Jacques and I both play with a trebly tone so our harmonies synch with eachother.
The gig comes to an end and we get everything away from the stage, we got a lot of cheers but also a lot of "Man, you guys normally were better than this, what happened?" We had an impressario there tonight, this was set up to be our break and he said "I am willing to go to work with you guys but first things first, fire that bassplayer!"
As I was driving home Ray told me that after he told me and Jacques that we should go on, he spend over ten minutes just to find Ade, he wasn't backstage, he wasn't at the bar, he wasn't at the toilets, he was nowhere to be found, until Ade just casually walked in from "Catching some fresh air" and then complaining that nobody set up his gear for him. Of course nobody did that because it's part of his job as a Bassplayer to set up his own gear.
So this upcoming Saturday will be the final gig Slavantas will play with Ade as our bassplayer, we have resisted the urge to fire him long enough but this time it's final, he's out of the band.
